Altered Genes: Genesis (19 page)

Mei stared at him and then looked at Lucia who nodded and spoke. “He’s right, why else would they have blocked the road and chased her down?”

Mei stood and looked down the long lane way to the roofs of the buildings in the distance.
The man on the ground wouldn’t die but they might.

“Okay.”

The Asian man tilted his head towards Saanvi. “I think I know her. Let me talk to her.” Without waiting for permission, he walked over and squatted next to her. “Hello, do you remember me”

She looked at him blankly.

“From Heathrow airport. I sat near you.…there was a man who tripped on your luggage.”

She nodded, a glimmer of recognition in her eyes.

He smiled. “Good. Where are the other men?”

Her lips trembled and she began to shake. He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I will protect you, but you must tell me where the other men are?”

“At the school…a lot of them.” Her voice broke. “They came yesterday…said the school was theirs. They killed the teachers—Dishita too.” Her chest heaved as she sobbed.

Mei pushed him aside and took the girl’s hands into her own. She spoke softly. “Did they hurt you? Did they do things to you…things you didn’t want them to do?” The girl turned away and looked at the ground.

“We need to go now,” The Asian man said as he stood. “They may have heard the shots.”

“What about the people up there? The students? We can’t leave them.” Mei pleaded.

He shook his head. “There is nothing we can do.”

Lucia stepped in front of her and stared her in the eye. “He’s right. We can’t stop them and they’ll kill us.” She pointed at the dead man on the pavement. “Especially now.”

Mei looked at the two of them. “What about the police?”

“What police? There are no police. You saw the highway,” Lucia spat. “If we see help, we’ll send it,” she added.

Mei pressed her lips together and nodded. She bent down to help the girl up. As she did, the wounded man near the truck began to curse at them.

The Asian man took a step towards him. Lucia caught his arm and spoke. “Never mind him, I’ll take care of it.” She pointed to Mei and Saanvi. “Take them and we’ll follow.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“Yes—take them and go now!”

L
ucia watched
as he herded Mei and the girl to his car. As they drove away, she jumped in the van and turned it around. They were gone from sight when she climbed out,

“Come with me,” she said to Emma who stood dazed by the side of the van. “We have to find a way to slow them down.”

The girl followed her to the pickup truck. A large box of roofing nails sat pushed up tight against the truck’s cab.

“What about those?”

Lucia nodded and jumped onto the bed. She slid the box to the tailgate and jumped down. The man on the ground saw what they intended to do and jeered at them.

“That ain’t gonna do jack-shit,” he yelled as they spread the nails on the pavement.

Wide-eyed, Emma stopped and stared at him. Lucia grabbed her arm and yanked her away.

“Ignore him.”

They finished spreading the nails and she looked around. A hunting knife hung from the dead man’s belt. She took it and used it to cut all four tires on the truck.

“Stupid spic,” the wounded man spat as he watched her. “We’ve got other cars.”

When she finished, she pushed Emma towards the van. “Go and get in. I’ll be a minute.”

She waited until the college student was in the van and then walked to the back of the pick-up. She stood above the man and looked down at him.

His face was contorted in an ugly expression. Spit flew from his mouth as he spewed his hatred. “You’re lucky I can’t get up, else I’d hurt you—hurt you bad.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You’re not going to hurt anyone—ever again.” She pulled the pistol from her pants and shot him in the head.

When she returned to the van, Emma stared at her, her face ashen with horror. “What did you do?”

She stared at the stunned girl. “I did what had to be done. If they catch us, they will kill us—or worse.”

She turned away and put the van in gear. They drove off with a squeal of the tires.

M
ei looked nervously
out the back window, just as she had for the last twenty minutes, alternating her attention between the girl, Saanvi, who sat shell-shocked in the back seat, and the cars lined up in the traffic behind them.

“We aren’t being followed,” the Asian man said.

She turned to face him. His eyes were fixed on the road in front of them but she had seen him checking the rear-view mirror as he drove.

She was going to thank him for helping them but remembered Emma’s cries when the college girl first saw him walk up the laneway.

“Were you following us?” She blurted the words out. He didn’t answer immediately and she added, “Emma, the girl with us said you followed her from the university.”

“I didn’t follow her.”

He spoke calmly and without any emotion. She studied his profile.
He was ordinary looking, slightly disheveled but so was she, everyone was.

“Are you with the police or military?”

“I’m nobody—just a man. My name is Chen Gong.”

He turned and gave her a quick look. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Mei…Mei Ling.”

She stole a glance at the girl in the backseat who stared listlessly out the window. “How do you know her?”

“I don’t know her,” he replied. “I saw her at Heathrow airport a few weeks ago. We sat near each other.”

She raised an eyebrow skeptically. “And you remembered her?”

“She reminds me of my daughter.”

She opened her mouth to ask more but closed it, afraid of what she might hear. He sounded forlorn. She watched as he glanced in the rear view mirror and spoke to Saanvi.

“I’m sorry there is so little room back there. I wasn’t expecting guests today.” When the girl looked up, he smiled.

Mei leaned over the seat. She hadn’t noticed when they first climbed into the car but it was filled with supplies. There were boxes of energy bars, bottled water, rolls of toilet paper, a mix of other things—including medical supplies, she noted. Even the floor space was filled, packages of baby wipes sat next to five or six boxes of ammunition.“

He’s not a nobody.

“Your friend made good time.”

She peered out the rear window and searched for the van. She saw the white nose of the Econoline poke out from behind a large semi-truck only to disappear as the ongoing traffic forced it back. It reappeared a few seconds later.

Mei shook her head.
She’s crazy.

He reached for the GPS mounted on the dash and toggled through the menus. “We’ll stop just before Leesburg—two hours from now. That is long enough to give us a good lead.”

They drove in silence for a while and Saanvi fell asleep, her head resting on a package of toilet paper.

“Where were you going?” he asked casually. She looked at him and he added, “Before the men.”

“Fort Detrick. To meet a friend.”

He nodded. “So am I.”

A few miles before Leesburg, at the turn-off to highway fifteen, they pulled off to the side of the road and climbed out to wait for the van.

They didn’t have to wait long. The blare of angry horns announced its arrival. They watched Lucia force the vehicle across three lanes of traffic, her hand out the window waving curses at the drivers who dared to honk at her. She parked behind the car and climbed out to join Gong and Mei.

Gong spoke first. “It will be dark in a few hours. I’m not certain we should be on the road at night.”

Mei shook her head. “I’d rather keep going if we can.”
The Walmart parking lot was still fresh in her mind and they were close, too close, to Tony to stop now.
“Do we have enough gas to reach Fort Detrick?”

Both he and Lucia shook their heads.

Mei looked anxiously down the road. “We need to keep going.”

“I think we are safe,” Gong said. He looked at Lucia.

“Yes, we are,” she answered. “There’s no one behind us. We’re safe.”

“Okay,” Mei said reluctantly. She looked down the highway in the direction they had just come. “But we still need gas and a place to sleep.”

T
he campground was
a horror straight out of Africa with tents jammed on top of each other, and burning piles of garbage. Dozens of people were queued up to use the handful of outhouses that were built to handle a fraction of the business they were getting.

Even so, there were cars lined up to enter. Each waited to pay an admission fee to the man who stood by the gate, one hand out for the money and the other on the butt of his gun. Mei didn’t need to tell Gong to keep driving, he saw the same thing she did.

“How much gas do we have?”

He looked down at the fuel gauge. “Very little.” She looked over at the console. The yellow LED showed a single bar.

“What about that place up there?” she asked and pointed to a gas station five hundred yards down the road. Like the campground, there was a long line of cars waiting to fill up. A pair of men, armed with assault rifles, kept order as they walked along side the road.

“It will do,” Gong said. He joined the line and turned the ignition off.

Forty-five minutes later, it was their turn and the man at the pumps motioned them forward.

He wore a pistol holstered on the side of his jeans and stood a few feet back from the car. His hand rested on his hip, just above the gun. Mei watched Gong slide his own weapon under the jacket on the seat beside him.

“Filling up?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Gong answered. “For the car and the van behind us.”

The man laughed when he saw the van. “Bet that’s a thirsty beast.” He leaned in closer to the car and ran his eye over them. His eyes lingered on the supplies in the back seat. “Gonna cost you. No credit—cash or equivalent only.”

“Equivalent only,” a second man said. He had appeared from nowhere, and judging from his manner was the boss. “We aren’t taking cash no more.”

He pointed to a box of energy bars in the back seat. “That’s worth two gallons and the toilet paper next to it is worth a gallon—“ He stopped when he saw the ammunition on the floor. “Each box of the 9mm is worth three gallons.

He stared at Gong and assessed him. “If you have more, I can give you a better rate.”

“We don’t have more,” Gong said in a flat voice.

The man shrugged and pointed to Saanvi who sat with her head resting against the window. The gold hoop earrings she wore shone against her brown skin.

“If that’s real gold, it might be worth a gallon or two.”

“It isn’t ours to give,” Gong said sharply.

Mei nodded in agreement. “What about this?” She pulled a gold chain out from beneath her shirt, slipped it over her head and handed it to Gong.

“Two gallons,” the man said after inspecting it.

“Give it back,” she demanded indignantly. “It’s twenty-four karat gold and worth about five hundred dollars.”

“Hold on just a minute, Miss, how do I know this is what you say it is?” He held out his hand to stop her from taking it back.

She leaned across the seat. “Look on the back of the pendant, see where it says twenty-four and beside that .999—That means it’s pure gold.”

He inspected it as if he were a jeweler and then after great deliberation announced. “Okay, this will get you a fill-up.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said in disgust. “Give it back.”

“How about a fill up for the car and five gallons for the van?” He cocked his head and waited for her to counter.

She held her hand out and wiggled it.

“Look, Miss,” he said with exaggerated seriousness, “that necklace won’t feed my kids.”

“And five gallons in the van won’t get us where we need to be,” she shot back.

“Just a sec.”

He stepped away from the car and argued with the first man. After a few minutes, they both returned. The first man sighed and then spoke. “My brother says it ain’t enough to fill up both the car and the van. That thing has a big tank.”

She pressed her lips together in a tight smile.
Good cop, bad cop…but they want it.
“Make me a counter offer then.”

Gong looked at her. “Are you certain you wish to part with it?”

The necklace had been a gift from her parents on her sixteenth birthday. It was all she had left to remember them by.

She nodded.

Gong turned back to the man. “We will throw in two boxes of ammo and a pack of toilet paper.”

The second man spoke from behind the first. “Done.”

Mei watched the necklace disappear into the man’s pocket. Over all the years she had worn it, she never really noticed it, but now that it was gone, she missed the warmth of it brushing against her skin

By the time the car and van were filled, the sun had disappeared over the horizon. It would be dark in a few minutes. There was a chill in the air. They pulled out of the gas station and stopped by the side of the road.

Mei motioned at Lucia and Emma to join them.

“We need to find somewhere to sleep,” she said when they reached the car.

The sound of shouting and gun shots from the campground down the road interrupted them. They watched the orange glow of a giant bonfire fill the sky. Sparks flickered and floated upwards, and then more gunshots.

“Wow, that’s crazy. I don’t want to be anywhere near that place,” Emma said her mouth agape.

Gong left them and returned to the driver’s seat. Mei watched as he played with the GPS. He was back a couple of minutes later.

“There is a side road, just past the next long curve. It runs down to the river. We will be hidden from the main road.”

“Okay, let’s go,” Mei said.

She looked at Lucia. “It wouldn’t be the first time we slept in the van.”